Black
by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Summary: Here, his magic is faulty. His school is a derelict fortress. Here, there are no prophecies, and no one Knows-Who. Beyond the Veil it was very cold, and Second City was very windy.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor do I own The Dresden Files.**

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**Black **

**A Wilderness**

When he stepped into the phone booth, Harry Potter had already been awake for a day and a night thinking about death and the Veil.

He liked to blame it on the Headmaster.

Harry plucked the phone from the receiver, and rested his fingers on the keys. The outside of the booth was a dirty red, scratched, with paint that was chipping to reveal previous coats. The inside, by comparison, was pristine. As though deterred by its exterior appearance, no one had ever ventured inside.

Six. Two. Four. Four. Two.

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic." The voice, a cool female tone, came not from the telephone, but from the booth itself. "Please state your name and business."

"Harry Potter," he said. "Closure."

"Visitor, please take…" The phone-booth rattled. There was the screech of metal on concrete and the floor descended, carrying him into the earth. Harry looked out the cracked panes, watching the sun-streaked sky recede, and allowed his mind to wander.

In June—right here, at the Ministry—Professor Dumbledore had saved his life. Hours later, the old man seemed to have a change of heart, and condemned Harry to a certain death. He had wanted to scream, to blame the professor for everything, but could not. Somewhere, inside, Harry had known the truth, even without Professor Trelawney's prophesy.

Harry Potter had to vanquish the Dark Lord. Or be vanquished. _Neither can live, while the other survives. _

He had thought of nothing since. There wasn't much for him to do during the summer but stew.

Each morning Harry awoke to sweltering heat in the smallest bedroom of Number Four, Privet Drive. He would sit up, wrapped in white sheets that looked like the greasy packaging of delicatessen meat, and wonder if the departed soul could sweat.

Each day, Harry would make his way downstairs to watch his aunt and cousin sit before the television. Their knives and forks clattered and scratched as they ate and chattered, excitedly watching as people were killed on the screen in gouts of blood and under thunderous gunfire. Harry would wonder if they had ever seen a man draw his final, shuddering breath.

He would wonder if Dudley Dursley knew what it felt like to stare the end in its foul, slavering maw and know that the world would continue to turn at the same speed with or without his massive weight crushing the cushions of the couch.

Sometimes.

Sometimes, Harry Potter wanted to grasp death in his hands and squeeze the life from it, just so it knew what it did to people.

And other times, usually when it was dark and the night breeze blew hot air into his face, and there was nothing to distract him from all that he had lost, and the pain welled up beneath his skin, Harry saw the Veil.

He could picture the ragged black curtain and the emptiness of the vast stone chamber. But beyond that, he could _hear _them. The breathless voices. At times, he imagined that the wind of their speech tickled the hairs on his arms. And it made him feel something, a foreign warmth in his chest. It radiated from his heart and into his fingertips and crackled into his bedclothes. The pain left him, then. He could sleep.

The Veil was his sanctuary. It was terrible to think of it as such, but when the weight became unbearable, that feeling was always ready to comfort him.

Even when the sun was out, and Harry was in the garden pulling at weeds simply to avoid contact with his relatives, he would think of the Veil's whispers and an echo of that wondrous heat would flow from the dandelions and into his palms as he strangled the plants to death.

But his all of his nights were not filled with visions of the Veil.

Sometimes Hedwig, Harry's snowy owl, would bring him presents and letters when the moon was out. That was the worst. Then Harry would think of Sirius Black and Cedric Diggory. They had died because of him and would never again be able to write a letter, or crease parchment, or tie a knot in string.

And the faces of Ron Weasley and Luna Lovegood and Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom sprouted up, too. They would follow Harry into the inferno itself if he needed but a handful of hell-roasted peanuts.

Everyone was so bloody willing to die for him. Because he was the hero, right? Homer could write poetry about him. Off to Troy, Harry Potter, so handsome and brave and strong—then very dead, because Lord Voldemort had stolen his Achilles'-like protection.

When Harry's birthday came, the gifts and well-wishes poured through his window in torrents. He found himself snowed under a pile of letters from people that he had never seen or heard from before. The Chosen One they were calling him, as though Boy Who Lived wasn't enough. All day, he sprawled on his bed, thinking about what would happen if he died right then. But the whispers of the Veil would not come to him.

The warmth that he longed for was not there. He rolled over, wrapping the sheets tightly about him, and shoved his face into a pillow.

He pictured Cedric's motionless, wide-eyed corpse in the stringy grass of Tom Riddle's graveyard, but all that came was a dark shiver. He thought of Sirius Black and the look of utter bewilderment on his godfather's features as the black curtain swallowed his body. But Harry could not feel the presence of the room, or the draw of the Veil.

The next sunrise found him waiting for the bus to London.

•••

The soles of his cross trainers squeaked across the Ministry of Magic's underground atrium and resounded in his ears. Heavily conscious of the sound, Harry's gaze flitted from wizard to witch, looking out for anyone that had taken notice of him.

The sleepy-eyed men and women that appeared in the grates of the fireplaces were unaware. Harry skirted around a few tall witches, just as one of the green fires flared up. An old wizard spilled from the hearth. He brushed ash from his pin-striped robes and yawned vigorously. Harry stood rooted, but the fellow just blinked in greeting, and slouched off towards the bank of lifts, without a second look.

By all rights, Harry should have been just as tired and oblivious. He was not. Emotions pummeled his insides and threatened to force their way out on a wave of partially digested toast. The sudden appearances of Ministry personnel didn't help.

Harry swallowed a sour taste, and forced the urge to be sick away.

The closer that he came to the Veil, the more powerful the feelings became. They bubbled and boiled inside, fear, rage, sorrow, hope. But weariness escaped him.

The dark planks of wood squeaking beneath his shoes were scrubbed so clean that Harry's reflection was able to stare back at him, an image of perfect bespectacled resolve.

Professor Dumbledore had said the Veil was not the end; it was just the start of the next journey. For so long, Harry thought that it was death. But now, he was not so sure. Whenever Harry thought of the Veil, whenever the warmth that the whispers brought spread in his gut and raised the hairs on his skin, he felt so _alive_.

Harry had to find out, beyond all doubt, if Sirius Black was gone.

His shoes screeched again. Harry came to a halt.

A fountain stood at the center of the Ministry's deep hall. The golden statue of a goblin stood in the water, ugly and droopy nosed. It gazed up, enraptured, at the empty expanse of ceiling above it. The sign that hung from the wide-eyed creature's neck read: _Out of Order. _Water dribbled from the goblin's gilded nostrils.

Harry fought to pull his gaze from his dirty shoestrings, and surveyed the floor around the Fountain of Magical Brethren. The rest of the statues had been obliterated only a few weeks ago. The floor shone with the effort of repeated polishing, but Harry could see the smoky marks, scorched varnish, the pockmarks in the wood. Chunks of marble were missing from the fountain's basin.

Two months was not enough time for most painful memories to lose their sting and just looking at the fountain made Harry feel like someone had stuffed his thrashing heart into a beehive.

Before him, the ghosts of crackling light and power twisted through the shallow water. The clang of magic on metal rang in his ears. Harry saw the heads of the golden sculptures tumble and scar the ground as Professor Dumbledore saved him, time and again, from a messy decapitation.

And he heard the voice of Bellatrix Lestrange in his ears. Harry could see the tip of her tongue wet her bloodied lips as she writhed on the floor before the fountain. Playful and hungry, she called out to him.

"_Mm, you need to mean it, Potter_."

There was suddenly a sick taste in his mouth. The Ministry could scour the floor every day. They could replace all of the floorboards, and build new statues of bowing goblins and scraping centaurs. It wouldn't be enough. Harry spit into the basin.

"You would think the Minister would have someone by to _fix_ the thing!" said a chipper voice.

Was that Tonks?

Harry's bee stung heart leapt into his throat as he turned. His fingers dove into his jeans to retrieve his wand, but upon seeing the speaker, he let out a low breath. The wand stayed in his pocket.

A pair of young witches, making their way across the atrium, had stopped to flip a few bronze coins into the fountain.

"Scrimgeour is here for _war_, Dolly," one of them said. She had a round, pretty face and curly hair. "Not to fund St. Mungo's."

"I s'pose," said Dolly, drawing the string of her coin purse. "But they heal people, don't they? St. Mungo's is going to need gold to heal people, Barb. They can't do it for free."

"St. Mungo's handles its own business," said Barb. She tugged her friend's sleeve. "They'll have gold enough when they get the serious patients again. Come along, we'll be late!"

The witches didn't notice the dark-haired teenager standing beside them, and brushed past Harry in a wave of colorful robes and clicking heels. He watched them go. His heart thumped against his ribs. The tone that the woman, Barb, had taken was not a pleasant one.

Everyone was certain of war.

After fifteen years of peace, there would be casualties again. Casualties and, and... Harry's hands balled into fists. The blank faces of Frank and Alice Longbottom flickered in his mind's eye. If there was something worse than death, then Neville's parents had found it. Even the healers at St. Mungo's couldn't fix them. And Barb had been so plain in telling her friend that there would be more like them soon.

The Ministry wasn't ready. Law enforcement and Aurors couldn't switch from peacetime to wartime fast enough to counter the twisted delights of people like the Death Eaters.

Bridges had collapsed. Dementors were roaming free. Rumors of a Inferi army were stirring in the newspapers, and the rising number of disappearances did nothing to quell that fear. Madam Bones was gone. Sturgis Podmore, member of the Order of the Phoenix, was gone, disappeared along with his entire family. Already, good people were being hurt.

Good people had died.

Harry's arms shook and his stomach churned with feeling. He shouldn't think like this now. The Veil was too close. He pressed a palm against his abdomen, filled his lungs with new air, and followed after the women. The gates of London's hidden Ministry stood open before him.

Harry rode the lift to level nine alone. The thing rumbled and clanked all the way down. The golden links of the lift's gate spread open and that pleasant voice announced, "_The Department of Mysteries_."

Harry stepped into an empty stone corridor.

Damp air shifted over his skin and the guttering torches. At the far end of the hall was a black door. The fear and sorrow that had raged in him since departing Privet Drive was overtaken by a surging, ravenous hope. Harry scrambled for the door, twisted the knob, and stepped through into the circular vestibule. The room was lit only by the eerie blue flame of stretched candles. They were mounted beside doors that might have been clones of the one Harry had entered through.

_Click._

The first black door shut behind him, and without warning the circular room whirled into motion. The dark doors were dark blurs as they tried to fool unsuspecting visitors. Tiny sparks of blue light popped and winked as the room spun. But Harry had been here before. The spinning room was forever a part of his memory.

He set his feet and waited at the center of the drum. The room slowed, stopped. A long, deep, fissure split the wood of the door he faced.

"The Veil," Harry called. It opened.

The stone chamber was quiet.

Grey steps that doubled as benches, clean and square edged, led down into the room. The room that was dim, and cold, and very, very quiet. The door breezed shut behind him. It did not make a sound.

The air didn't move in the chamber, not even in the slow draft of the corridor. It was still, like death. Harry breathed, and even as the air hissed through his teeth it became still. The chamber seemed to be miles beneath the earth, but Whitehall, Harry knew, could not have been more than a few hundred feet above him.

"_Lumos_." Light, white, flashed out in a cone from the end of his wand. Harry raised his arm, spreading the glow before him, and descended. The _pat, pat_ of his footfalls nearly dissipated before he could hear them. Harry brushed at his fringe with a sweaty palm. His light flashed up against a platform. His chest was ready to burst. There it was.

At the center of the stone pit, was a circular dais. Three shallow steps led to the top, and at their terminus was the archway, and the Veil. Its black cloth flapped in the windless chamber.

In his haste, Harry stumbled up the last step; the toe of his shoe caught on the edge, and he pitched forward. Harry threw a hand out to arrest his fall, and caught the stone of the arch. Like the ocean creeping up to the shore, a chorus of garbled whispers washed into his ears.

Harry smiled. A warmth stirred in the pit of him, not in his stomach, or chest, or heart, but the very inside of him. Two months he had waited to hear them again.

Their speech was indiscernible. A jumble of words in languages that didn't register as anything he knew, but Harry was captivated all the same. His fingers trailed up and down the crumbling stone as the voices slid around his head.

Harry shut his eyes, and ran his palm over the archway. The material was worn. Little threads of the stone grazed over his skin. He felt the marks. They must have been runes.

Harry opened his eyes; his mouth bent. Hermione had taught them a little bit of the Ancient Runes she studied—letters from the ancient north. These looked nothing like them. They were minute, and writ deep into the block, as though inscribed with a searing needle. The voices grew loud as Harry traced them with his nail.

"Oh, hush," said Harry, his tone gentle. He brought his face close, as though proximity would translate the text. The veil fluttered and the voices trilled, drawing his attention. His stomach vibrated, not unlike a sound of hunger.

No one really knew where it led.

Professor Dumbledore had insisted that it was death. If so, then where was Sirius's body? Where was his wand? His clothes? Harry gritted his teeth at the flash of anger that tore through his pleasant haze. There had not been so much as a funeral for his godfather. Even Uncle Vernon had taken Harry to funerals when people died.

The voices were murmuring feverishly now. Harry gripped the Veil and his heart grew hot in his chest. The dark fabric was silken, and slid through his fingers like a wind through a leafless branch. He grasped another handful.

"Where do you _go_?" Harry asked it. The voices wavered and grew very soft, as if they were preparing to answer.

_Pat, pat. _There were footsteps behind him.

"Morning, Croaker."

Harry froze. The cloth slid from between his fingers. He clenched his wand and turned about.

"It boggles my mind that you can work in such dark at your age," said the silhouette of Barb from the Atrium. "But I will not."

There was a loud snap. It was an alien sound in the silent expanse of the chamber. Harry heard the _whoosh_ of a hundred torches being synchronously lit, the light, although gentle made him squint. Barb let out a startled curse.

"You're not Croaker," she said. Her hand shot into her robes.

"_Obliviate_!" said Harry. But Barb retrieved her wand in time. There was a sound like shattering glass, and the woman batted his memory charm away.

"Who are you?" Barb said, her chest swelling in fury. A golden badge gleamed at her bosom. It had not been pinned there in the atrium. The little button was in the shape of a single capital 'U'.

Barb's wand had not dipped or wavered. "How did you get in here?"

Harry was silent. He stood beside the archway; his fingers squeezed it for reassurance. Barb started towards him. Harry noticed the tension in her neck, and hard set of her jaw.

Unspeakables were not allowed to speak of the Department of Mysteries, or the work that took place in its chambers.

Harry had first seen a pair of men that worked in the bowels of the Ministry nearly a year ago, Bode and Croaker. Mr. Weasley, who had been accompanying Harry to a hearing on level ten, had seemed very uncomfortable to be near them. He might have been uncomfortable around Barb, too.

"Step away," she said, eyes flashing. "That's a dangerous thing."

"Where does it go?" asked Harry.

"Are you daft?" said Barb. "I said move."

Perhaps Harry was crazy. He was hearing voices and, until a few weeks ago, every witch and wizard in Britain thought he was an unstable, attention seeking prat. He took a step back. And then squared himself directly in front of the trembling Veil. Only Sirius had been unconditional in his support.

"You have to know," said Harry. Barb was close enough now that Harry could see the smattering of freckles on her cheeks and nose, and the dark roots of her blonde ringlets.

"You're Harry Potter," Barb accused. Her eyes wrinkled in fury.

"Yes." He kept his hand steady. If her tone was any indication, Barb did not like how teenagers had stolen into the most secretive department of the magical government, and then played with all of their things.

Harry suspected that she really didn't like that that he had done it twice.

"Move, Mr. Potter," called Barb.

"No."

"This is not a place for—"

"For what," Harry cut in heatedly. The wand shook in his grasp. The whispers roared in his ears. "For children? Because I saw my godfather disappear right here. I saw his own cousin laugh when she murdered him. I saw your mate Rookwood lead a whole party of Death Eaters in here to murder schoolchildren. I saw… " Harry's voice cracked and his throat went dry. He stopped talking. The Veil's whispers were all of a sudden very comforting, and a cool breeze ruffled his hair when they spoke.

"I was not going to say children," Barb snapped. She jerked her wand at him. "This is not a place for anyone but authorized staff of the Department of Mysteries."

"Where," said Harry, "does it go?"

"And I'll say it again, Potter," Barb said. "Step down."

"Just tell me," Harry pressed. "I need to know where the Veil goes. Please."

Barb regarded him with steely eyes. After a moment, she lowered her wand and beckoned for him to come towards her.

"Perhaps," she began, "when you've graduated Hogwarts, you can come and study it for yourself. We always need curious and able wizards." Barb motioned for him again, but Harry did not budge.

"Does it kill you?" he asked. "Where do the bodies go? Do they keep them somewhere down here?"

"Bloody _hell_!" cried Barb, her wand was pointed at him again. "_Incarcerous_."

"_Protego_!" replied Harry. Braided black ropes cracked against a wall of solid air; where they made the strongest contact, blue-white sparks fizzled and fell to the dais.

"Should I take that as resistance to arrest, Mr. Potter?" asked the Unspeakable, striding to the base of the platform. Harry held his wand up and planted his feet.

"Tell me where the Veil leads," he said. "And I'll come down."

"Just how thick is your skull," said Barb, stopping her advance. "Look at where you are. It's a _mystery_."

At her word, joy spread through him.

"It doesn't kill you?" said Harry breathlessly. The woman looked conflicted. She raised her wand, and then lowered it again. Too quiet for him to hear, Barb muttered something and then met his eyes.

The voices behind the veil crooned into Harry's ear. There was something like a tug behind his own eyes, and Harry felt himself focusing intently on Barb's face.

Her eyes were blue, flecked with bits of grey, and appealing. The little wrinkles of skin were daubed a pale purple beneath them. Harry saw the way her eyelashes trembled when she blinked. The web of faint blood vessels across her eyes made the whites seem very bright. And her pupils were blacker than the veil. There was the curious warmth in his heart again, and Harry felt as though he was being pulled forward into her gaze. All he saw was blue… and Barb looked away.

"We don't know if it kills you," she said quietly. "But no one ever comes back."

"So it doesn't kill you." Harry was a little shaken at the intensity of the previous look, but it still took everything he had not to turn and face the Veil, then. Barb wouldn't miss the opportunity to bind him. Of course, he would go with her, eventually. In spite of her reluctance, the woman had given him food for his hungry hope.

Sirius wasn't dead.

He was just somewhere else, beyond the Veil, and no one could get there and come back. But he couldn't be dead. The whispers were driving into his skull, and Harry knew it was the truth.

"We. Don't. Know," said Barb. "Now, come down."

"You're finding out how to bring people back," said Harry, ignoring the woman. "Are you close?"

"No closer now than they were six centuries ago," said Barb through her teeth. "Just, will you come on?"

"Och, it's bright in here!" said a new voice. "Barbie, I got yer coffee."

Barb spun, her robes swishing.

"Croaker!"

They hadn't heard the door open or shut behind the newcomer. He was a thin man, older, with a grizzled beard and a short cane. Harry took a reflexive step back. The man's mouth fell open and he dropped the ceramic mug of coffee. It fell to the stone and exploded, but Harry didn't hear it make a noise.

There was a breeze, and the black veil brushed over his shoulders and settled over his face.

Harry felt as though someone had pulled all of his organs up into his throat. His shoes squeaked on the dais; he fell back. In perfect clarity, he heard what the voices were whispering.

Now it was a thunderous scream that bore down on him from all directions.

"**We open the Way**."

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**Feedback is appreciated.**

**Thank you for reading. **


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